The Fifth (All-Russian) Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.

December 21–27, 1908 (January 3–9, 1909)

Draft Resolution on the Present Moment and the Tasks
  of the Party

Thepresent political situation is characterised by the
following features:

(a)The old feudal autocracy is evolving towards a bourgeois monarchy which
covers up absolutism by sham constitutional forms. The alliance of tsarism with
the Black-Hundred landlords and the top commercial and industrial bourgeoisie
has been openly solidified and recognised by the coup d’&at of June 3 and
the establishment of the Third Duma. Having of necessity finally taken the path
of the capitalist development of Russia, and striving to keep to a path which
would preserve the power and the revenues of the feudalist landlords, the
autocracy is manoeuvring between that class and the representatives of
capital. Their petty disputes are made use of for the maintenance of absolutism,
which together with these classes is carrying on a furious counter-revolutionary
struggle against the socialist proletariat and the democratic peasantry, who
displayed their strength in the recent mass struggle.

(b)The agrarian policy of present-day tsarism is distinguished by the same
bourgeois-Bonapartist character. Tsarism has lost all faith in the naive
devotion of the peasant masses to the monarchy. It seeks an alliance with the
rich peas ants, to whom it has given a free hand to plunder the countryside. The
autocracy is making frantic efforts to break up all communal allotment
landowning as speedily as possible, and to consolidate purely private
landowning. Such a policy makes all the contradictions of capitalism in the
countryside a hundred times more acute, and hastensthe division of the countryside into an insignificant minority of reactionaries
and a revolutionary mass of proletarians and semi-proletarians.

(c)The liberal bourgeoisie headed by the Cadet Parts, having taken the
counter-revolutionary path at the very first. mass actions in the revolution,
continues to pursue that path, coming still closer to the Octobrists, arid by
its tsarist nationalist agitation—which expresses the growth of
self-consciousness of the bourgeoisie as a class—is in fact doing a
service to absolutism and the feudal-minded landlords.

(d)The peasant masses, as even their restricted and distorted representation
in the Third Duma shows, continue—in spite of all the persecutions of the democratic element in the
countryside—to remain, all their wavering not withstanding, on the side of
a revolutionary-democratic agrarian upheaval which, by completely abolishing
landlordism, would thereby ensure the most rapid, large-scale and free
development of productive forces in a capitalist Russia. The law of November 9
only hastens the division of the peasant masses into irreconcilably hostile and
politically-conscious forces.

(e)The proletariat has sustained, arid continues to sustain, the heaviest
blows of all, both from the autocracy arid from the rapidly uniting and
aggressive capitalists. In spite of this, the proletariat in comparison with
other classes preserves the greatest unity and the greatest loyalty to its class
party, with which it was fused by the revolution. The proletariat, is
continuing the struggle for its class interests and deepening its socialist
class-consciousness, remaining the only class capable of giving consistent
leadership to a new revolutionary struggle.

(f)On the whole it is beyond doubt that the objective problems of a
bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia remain unsolved. The continuing
economic crisis, unemployment and famine prove that the latest policy of the
autocracy cannot provide the conditions for the capitalist development of
Russia. This policy inevitably leads to the deepening of the conflict between
the democratic masses and the master classes, the growth of discontent among new
sections of the population, the sharpening and deepeningof the political struggle between the different classes. In such an economic and
political situation a new revolutionary crisis is inevitably coming to a head.

(g)The general sharpening of struggle on the world market due mainly to the
changes in the industrial situation of Western Europe in the direction of a
crisis, which has in 1908 taken the form of a depression, and due to the revolutionary movements in the East which herald the formation of national
capitalist states, is intensifying competition, leading to more frequent
international conflicts, thereby sharpening the class contradiction between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and making the general international situation
more and more revolutionary.

Consideringthis state of affairs, the All-Russian Conference of the
R.S.D.L.P. recognises that the principal tasks of the Party at the present time
are:

(1)Toexplain to the mass of the people the meaning and importance of the
latest policy of the autocracy and the’ role of the socialist proletariat
    which, while pursuing a class policy of its own, must give leadership to the
    democratic peasantry in the present political situation and in the coining
    revolutionary struggle.

(2)Tothoroughly ’study and widely popularise the experience of mass struggle
in 1905-07, which has provided indispensable lessons in revolutionary
    Social-Democratic tactics.

(3)Tostrengthen the R.S.D.L.P. in the form it was built up during the
revolutionary epoch; to maintain the traditions of its unfaltering struggle,
    both against the autocracy and reactionary classes arid against bourgeois
    liberalism; to struggle against deviations from revolutionary Marxism and
    against attempts, revealed among certain elements of the Party who had
    fallen under the influence of disintegration, to whittle down the slogans of
    the R.S.D.L.P. and to liquidate the illegal organisation of the R.S.D.L.P.

Atthe same time it should be borne in mind that only by promoting the transfer
of Party functions to Social-Democratic workers themselves—a process which
is already definitely materialising—and only by setting up and
consolidating illegal Party organisations can the Party emerge on the right path
of development.

(4)Toassist in every way possible the economic struggle of the working class,
in accordance with the resolutions of the London and Stuttgart Congresses.

(5)Touse the Duma and the Duma rostrum for revolutionary Social-Democratic
propaganda and agitation.

(6)Firstamong immediate tasks comes prolonged effort to train up, organise and
unite the class-conscious masses of the proletariat. Then, subordinated to
    this task, the work of organisation should be extended to the peasantry and
    the army, particularly in the form of printed propaganda and
    agitation—principal attention being given to the socialist education
    of the proletarian and semi-proletarian elements among the peasantry and in
    the army.